One Track Mind: Bearshark’s “Canyonlands”

Standout Track: No. 5, “Canyonlands,” the title track from Bearshark's gorgeous instrumental EP that dropped late last month. A post-rock epic that cycles through multiple melodic themes over the course of its seven spacey minutes, the magisterial “Canyonlands” would fit right in one either of Talk Talk’s final two albums.

Musical Motivation: “Canyonlands” is a reference to the Canyonlands National Park of Utah, a colorful desert place that both guitarist Mick Sexton and drummer Alan Kayanan have visited. What they saw inspired the main aesthetic on the both the song and the EP as a whole. “Mick and I were quite excited about how much we liked the dramatic landscape that’s out there,” says Kayanan. “We started writing ‘Canyonlands’ because we were invoking these Spaghetti Western sounds.”

Go West, Young Man: On May 24, at the Rock & Roll Hotel, the Mount Pleasant band played what will likely be its final show; Sexton and guitarist Kiel Atkinson recently left D.C. for the West Coast in hopes of rediscovering the idyllic essence that inspired the album. But if Canyonlands is Bearshark’s last release, then it’s certainly a fitting sendoff. “I kind of had it in my head that eventually I wanted to move out west,” says Sexton, who now lives in Seattle. “There’s a lot of beautiful stuff out here.”